Category: Written Reviews

So big news here; to reflect the change in cast, Kimberly is replaced with Kat in the Pink suit… and this is done by taking the totally generic looking Kimberly character in the comics and painting her hair blonde. Voila! New Pink Ranger! Clearly, these colorists have learned their lessons from the ninja swapping trick of Mortal Kombat exceptionally well, but I digress.

Sadly, I only wish I were joking because the Rangers are such one-note characters (even more so than on the television show, which may shock some folks) that if you had kept Kim in there, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in the long run. This is quite telling when you open up the book and see the first page, where you see Kim’s head recolored as blond.

In any event, the first story has the Rangers fighting Pudgy Pig and that’s it. It’s just straight up ten pages of straight up Ranger action with some Ninjazords tossed in for good measure. For what it’s worth, it’s an accurate depiction of Pudgy Pig. Marvel might recycle some old monsters a couple times, but at the very least, they do them justice, unlike the Saga series by Hamilton.

The second story, also the second story in the series to boast the distinction of being drawn by legendary illustrator Steve Dikto, features a generic pimply-faced nerd getting picked on and accepts an offer by Rita to be made big and strong, only to be turned into a monster instead. The tale is nothing special, but unlike Dikto’s first Rangers story, the artwork here is much better; less overly cartoonish and more semi-realistic.

The first story features the return of Pirantishead, the first Season 2 monster, and a rare underwater fight that brings us our problem; Aisha’s fear of water… which makes no sense because she participated in a triathlon that involved swimming in a prior episode, thus denoting a massive discontinuity between the comics and the books. It’s a nothing story about overcoming your fears, but at least the art is decent and the setting is somewhat unique for Power Rangers.

The second story, Most Valuable Slayer, is about girls being as good as boys in sports and stuff. The girl in question, Kelly, wants to join the baseball team, but her being a girl is a problem until the end of the story when she sticks around to watch the Rangers fight a pink monster thing. Again, a generic nothing story that is hampered by some truly hideous artwork. The Rangers are depicted in an overly muscular fashion that would make Rob Liefeld blush, nobody knows how to draw proper faces… the back-up story of an active burner would’ve been a more appropriate place for this stinker.

Our second Marvel issue of Mighty Morphin contains another two stories of the mighty Marvel fare.

The first story, Playing Dirty, has the Ranger teens helping out at a car wash before Zedd decides to turn a car (occupied by Bulk & Skull… naturally) into a monster. This story reads more like an abridged episode than anything; set up the plot of the day, follow up with the pre-requisite Tenga battle (which feature the Rangers morphing to their usual fare instead of the Ninja suits… I guess we can’t mix and match suits in these two comics), introduce the monster for the Rangers to fight and introduce the Zord battle, which is actually quite unique in the way it disposes of the car monster.

The second story, notable for being illustrated by the legendary Steve Dikto, has Aisha and Kimberly looking after kids while Bulk & Skull attempt to be upstanding citizens or something… aren’t they supposed to be cops at this point? Anyway, Rito Revolto shows up and threatens the kids, but our two teens can’t morph in front of kids. It’s a fairly basic story with some surprisingly mediocre artwork. The humans look bad and the monsters are drawn in a somewhat cartoonish fashion. Not one of Dikto’s better works, but the story itself isn’t too bad, as it’s more of a Bulk & Skull sidestory than anything involving the Rangers.

Marvel Comics took over the license of producing MMPR comics, beginning with an adaptation of the first MMPR motion picture and following up with not one, but two short-lived comic series. For this run, we’ll be focusing on the main MMPR comic and get to the Ninja Ranger stuff later down the line.

Each issue has two stories and unlike the Hamilton comics which tried to keep the formula of the show intact, the Marvel kinda sorta does its own thing. The first story has the Rangers at a computer club where they marvel over the Internet, inspiring Zedd to create a virus-based monster, while the second story has the Rangers dealing with a copycat monster of sorts. For what they are, they’re perfectly adequate and quick little reads; something that would work as part of a digest edition or something like that. The characterization could use a little work; other than little sparks from Billy spewing technobabble, all these Rangers could be interchangeable.

The low point of these comics was the art, which is basically that rough-looking style with square faces and thin eyes that was the style in the mid-90s. The first story isn’t all too bad and is the typical Marvel 90s style that dominates most of the stories in this run, but the second story is where the art takes a nosedive, with characters not resembling who they’re supposed to be (Rocky is blonde here, whereas on the show, he wasn’t) or the action bits just being a confounding mess of visuals. Never been a huge fan of the art for this Marvel run and it doesn’t get any better from here.

Nowaways, Street Fighter is one of Capcom’s prized franchises and it’s nice to see it get a nice revival (along with the 2D fighting game in general) in recent days. With a whole bunch of games and tons of material, it’s perhaps fitting that the series got a nice little mythology and continuity behind it… something for people to get behind whenever they want to make supplemental material.

Which is a good thing… because tripe like today’s subject matter should never be conceived ever again. And no, I’m not referring to whatever Spider-turd Joe Quesada has tossed out recently…

Continue reading “COMIC REVIEW – The Malibu Street Fighter Comics”

My brother dug through some old comics and came across several issues of the old Animal Man series. For those unfamiliar, I’ll use a passage from some guy’s review of an Animal Man TPB:

Buddy Baker is a man who can absorb powers from nearby animals temporarily – for example, in rescuing a cat from a tree at the start of the first chapter, he falls off a branch, absorbs the cat’s agility, and twists like a feline to land on his feet. Living with his wife (Ellen) and kids (Cliff and Maxine), Buddy feels that something is missing from his life – he needs to become…Animal Man once again.

Sounds like intriguing stuff, right? Well, back to my story, my brother pulls out a bunch of Animal Man issues (#51-56 I believe) that collectively form a story-arc called Flesh and Blood. Without spoiling much, the story depicts Buddy Baker/Animal Man attempting to come back to life after basically being run over by a truck.

At first, I thought the death itself was okay, but looking back on it, it seems rather unremarkable. Perhaps that’s the intent of it all; that this superhero that isn’t widely known gets offed by being run over by roadkill. But while the death scene seems more like an afterthought, it’s the resurrection process that is the main focus of the latter chapters, as Buddy takes on the life essences of various animals from a bat to lice until eventually retaining human form. This is one of those few comic book stories that actually got me hooked until the end.

If you’re into this kind of stuff, fetch this set of Animal Man issues. I’m not sure if there’s a collected edition of this story, but there should be. It’s good stuff.